In 18 years, I will show you the future
of love. The
summer vacation is over, and his son Hank returns to the United States from his holiday destination in Greece, and Jesse sends him off. The 14-year-old boy and his father were speechless, all the questions were asked and the answers were just a few words. But it is still known from the conversation that Jesse has divorced his ex-wife, his son lives in Chicago with his mother, and he lives in Europe for a long time.
Jesse walked out of the airport lobby. His wife, Celine, was waiting for him in the car, and the twin daughters were already asleep in the back row. It turned out that Jesse and Celine met in Paris in "Love at Sunset" in 2004, and so many changes have taken place since.
"Love Before Midnight" is the third part of a love literary trilogy. The first two parts are "Love Before Dawn" and "Love at Sunset", and there are 9 years between them. The directors are Richard Linklater; the starring actors are Julie Debbie and Ethan Hawke. When the first film was released, they were 26 and 25 years old, and the second film was 35 and 34 years old. 44 and 43 years old.
18 years ago, the American young man Jessie traveled through Europe by train. One day before returning to the United States, he ran into the French beauty Celine. The two had a good chat, so they got off the train in Vienna and wandered around the city at will. Astronomy, geography and philosophy Religion, love and family, everything is boring. Celine learned that Jesse's trip to Europe was abandoned by his ex-girlfriend, and Celine had just ended a relationship. After a romantic night, the two decided to ignore the "no longer see" agreement and agreed to meet at the train station 6 months later.
Time flies, by 2004, Jesse has become a well-known writer, and has written his story with Celine into a novel, and signed for sale in Europe. At the last stop in Paris, Celine appeared in the crowd in the bookstore. It turned out that she could not make the appointment because of the death of her grandmother 9 years ago. At this time Jesse was married and had children, and Celine also had a stable boyfriend. The two who became mature were more open about many topics, and both expressed that they couldn't let go of each other after that night 9 years ago. Celine promised to sing a song to Jesse before going to the airport. After the song "Waltz", Jesse seemed to understand something.
Another 9 years. Jesse sent off her son, and drove to her friend to continue the holiday with Celine. In the long shot of more than ten minutes, the two chatted casually: Celine was given a job offer and was struggling to accept it, because the two discussed whether to move back to the United States and live closer to Hank, and this job is in Paris. .
After dinner, the two were about to make each other, but they received a call from Hank to report that they were safe, so they inevitably continued to talk about the topic at the beginning of the film: whether or not to move back to the United States. The atmosphere began to become serious and tense: Celine complained that Jesse wanted to move back to Chicago but refused to admit that she was the one who did housework from the birth of her daughter to now; Jesse retorted that she had been accommodating his wife for years and was blamed instead. . The two quarreled with each other. Celine said that “I still had a hobby of playing guitar back then. It was because of you that I could not continue.” Jessie said, “If it weren’t for your song, my life wouldn’t have changed. It's like this now". Celine slammed the door and threw a sentence "I don't think I love you anymore".
At the end, at midnight, Celine sat alone in a daze. Jesse walked over and read a "letter" to her in the tone of a "stranger from the future", telling her that they were still together in her eighties and that this Greek night was romantic and unforgettable. The camera slowly zoomed out, and Celine finally said, "So tonight is really what the letter says?" The conversation between the two became blurred and unrecognizable, only the clear night and the calm sea.
As a continuation of the first two romantic essays, the third part of falling into marriage obviously can't be romantic again, but under the feathers of the same place, there is also a long and dense atmosphere.
Like the previous two films, "Love Before Midnight" also maintains an open ending. At the New York premiere of the Tribeca Film Festival in early May, the audience had different opinions on whether the two were reconciled.
These three films, which lasted for 18 years, were dubbed as "chat" literary films, and the content is the constant movement and chatter of the two protagonists day and night. Although the topic is very divergent, it will eventually return to the theme of gender relations. After two hours of watching it, I didn't feel bored. It all relied on the performance of the two protagonists and the word Zhuji of the lines. The performance was so real that people couldn't help but have the question "Is this an impromptu performance". They thought that maybe they just turned on the camera and the two people played at will, but the director replied that every line was written in advance in the script. Every scene has to be rehearsed again and again until it is accurate. The last "Sunset" brought three Oscar nominations for best original screenplay. This time it should be equally competitive.
This kind of filming method of presenting the same group of people at different ages, except for the trilogy, is probably only the British growth series documentary and François Truffaut's Antoine series, and it is based on dialogue. People think of Eric Rohmer, who is also a long-winded discussion of the relationship between the sexes, but the uniqueness of the trilogy is also obvious: from the infinite yearning for the future in his early twenties, to the beauty of the encounter again, to the discussion A mid-life crisis is like watching the private life history of a lover, which makes people unable to look back at their own lives and think about it.
As a representative of this generation of American independent film directors, Linklater has many works focused on rebellious teenagers ("Young and Frivolous", "Rock Campus", "Urban Ronin"), with unique perspectives, many lines, and excavated many local Texas Story ("Bernie"). Ethan Hawke said that he is a "true mature artist" of this generation. Among independent film directors at the same time as him, Soderberg has announced that he has stopped filming, Quentin is obsessed with blood, and David Lynch does everything but does not make films.
Ethan Hawke has always devoted himself to stage plays and also writes movie scripts. In recent years, Julie Debby has directed and acted in several films "Two Days in New York" and "Two Days in Paris", which are also impressive. The script of "Love Before Midnight" is the result of the sincere cooperation of three close friends.
Although each is an independent story, if you look at the three movies together, you will find that there are many details that complement each other. In the first part, Jesse and Celine pretend to be friends of each other, and "answer the phone" to listen to each other's heartfelt voices, including topics that cannot be directly expressed such as feelings for each other; at the end of "Midnight", Jesse borrows "come back from the future" He told Celine that they were still together when they were in their eighties. In the first part, Celine told Jesse that she would love each other more because she learned more details. When watching "Midnight", she couldn't help thinking that the two who saw so many details about each other really loved each other more. Is the other party?
(Published in "People" June 2013)
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